BACKGROUND: The League of Conservation Voters (LCV)
has released a report claiming President Bush deserves a grade
of "D-" for his handling of environmental issues during
his first years in office. In arriving at this grade, LCV president,
Deb Callahan, a former Al Gore campaign aide, leveled a number
of absurd charges. A few of the more flagrant of those charges,
and responses to them, follow:

LCV Charge: The President deserves a low grade for
"breaking a campaign pledge to curb carbon dioxide emissions
at the behest of power companies."

Response: The opposite is true. Major power companies,
particularly ENRON, were lobbying hard for caps on CO2 emissions
so they could profit by selling emissions credits to smaller
competitors. The tool they used to push for these caps was the
Kyoto Protocol or global warming treaty. The President wisely
pulled back from the treaty because it would harm the U.S. economy
for no purpose. The President paid no attention to the views
of large corporations in doing this.

Response: Among objective climate scientists, the theory
of man-caused global warming has been discredited. Computer
models used by the proponents of the theory that man causes global
warming to predict warming trends predicted that the lower atmosphere,
or troposphere, would warm first. According to NASA measurements,
it has not. These computer models also predicted the polar regions
would be the first part of the earth to warm and that it would
warm the most. These regions have been cooling.1,2

LCV Charge: LCV faults the President for "a proposal
to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) as part
of an energy plan drafted by corporate interests behind closed
doors."

Response: The Administration's unwillingness to interfere
in the workings of the market during the ENRON collapse in the
President's home state has demonstrated that the President has
been deaf to the pleadings of large corporations.

Response: When Congress created the 19.5 million-acre
ANWR in 1980, under then-President Jimmy Carter, it set aside
broad, desolate areas within the refuge's boundaries for future
oil and gas exploration. Now President Bush is proposing exploration
in just 2,000 acres --1/10,000th of the total refuge -- which,
with modern techniques, can be done with little-to-no environmental
impact.

LCV Charge: The LCV criticizes the President's "choice
of Gale Norton, who spent a career undermining the very environmental
laws she was appointed to enforce, to be Secretary of Interior."

Response: Perhaps LCV is unhappy to have a Secretary
of the Interior who recognizes that humans live on earth, too.
The previous Secretary of the Interior, Bruce Babbitt -- a former
president of the League of Conservation Voters -- led a campaign
to end legal cattle grazing and mining on federal land and pushed
the Clinton administration to place millions of acres off limit
to most human activity through the designation of national monuments.
At Babbitt's instigation, Bill Clinton created more national
monuments than any other President in history, 22, eight of them
during his last week in office.

LCV Charge: Also criticized was the "appointment
of never-met-an-environmental-regulation-he-didn't-hate John
Graham" to head the Office of Information and Regulatory
Affairs at the Office of Management and Budget.

Response: LCV may be concerned that the office will
now actually do its job of reviewing the appropriateness of environmental
regulations. The office did not do that during the Clinton administration,
as it permitted regulations that polluted well water in 31 states
with the gasoline additive MTBE; allowed toxic municipal sludge
to be spread on farm fields; supported logging bans which added
fuel to record forest fires in 2000 and helped prevent the use
of numerous harmless chemicals that could have been used to protect
and enhance the nation's food supply.3

by Tom Randall, Director
John P. McGovern, MD Center for Environmental and Regulatory Affairs
The National Center for Public Policy Research

Contact the author at: 773-857-5086 or [email protected]
The National Center for Public Policy Research
Chicago office
3712 North Broadway - PMB 279
Chicago, IL 60613